


The Way Home Gets Longer

by namizaela



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Good Parent Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Trauma, im having an absolute blast with these tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23987695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namizaela/pseuds/namizaela
Summary: Ciri's trying to forget, but it never works out that way--not really, not when it matters.(The journey to Kaer Morhen told in three parts. First chapter Ciri's POV, second chapter Geralt's POV).
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Vesemir
Comments: 26
Kudos: 113





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I'm back :) I have a lot of feelings about Geralt and Ciri's father/daughter relationship and this is my way of putting what I think into words. I hope you enjoy!!

_I._

In the midst of the chaos, in the midst of all the screaming and smoke, stands her grandmother. She’s bleeding heavily. Ciri opens her mouth to call out to her, but somehow her lips won’t come apart. Instead, the scream trapped in her throat emerges as a pained whine, and Ciri knows no one can hear it but her. 

Her grandmother, the Lioness of Cintra, remains in the window. She blocks out the moon with her body, hovering a little as she grasps the wall with a hand. Her fingers leave streaks of blood on the stone. Her head dips forward to survey the ground below. Ciri wonders if she is looking for her, and she desperately tries to make a sound to get her attention. I’m not on the battlefield, she thinks, as if she can communicate with her grandmother through thought. I’m right behind you. All you need to do is turn around and see me. Ciri tries to move to stop her grandmother, who is now swaying dangerously on the ledge, but her legs are sluggish, as if her shoes are made of lead. Please turn around, she begs, trying and failing to call out to her. But she doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t even look over her shoulder as she steps forward.

Ciri wakes to the sound of her own scream. Her voice is shrill and unfettered, and for a second she’s glad to be free of the dream’s murky silence. Then it all comes back: the window, the smoke, her grandmother taking a step and vanishing with nothing more than the rustling of fabric. She lays, mouth dumbly hanging open and panting like Roach always does after a hard trail. She knows her grandmother is dead--but like that? Not on the battlefield, but by throwing herself from a window? Is her vision true?

“Ciri.” She picks her head up, and Geralt is looking at her from opposite the campfire. He’s sitting on his heels with a pile of brushwood next to him. The fire still burns bright, even though the night sky is fading into early dawn.

“Geralt,” she manages to croak out. Her voice is rough with sleep. She feels her heart pound in her chest, as it has been for the past minute, and she desperately wills it to calm.

“Another nightmare?” 

Ciri slowly sits up. “I...I think so.” She hugs her knees to her chest, even though she knows it makes her look childish. “Sorry for screaming.”

He looks surprised for a moment. “It’s alright. Don’t be sorry,” he says. He waits a moment, feeding another stick to the crackling fire. A songbird cries out, and a chorus of high-pitched calls follow in response. 

Ciri waits for her heartbeat to slow before speaking. When she does, her voice is barely over a whisper. “Do you know how Grandmother died?”

Geralt tenses for a second. He stares at the ground, which is covered with a thin white frost. “I do,” he admits. “Do you want me to tell you?”

Ciri thinks back to her dream. It seemed so real that she isn’t sure if it was a dream or a vision. The smell of blood, her grandmother’s blood, still lingers in her nose. She hopes it was a dream. She hopes her grandmother at least had the dignity of dying by the sword. After all, that’s what she always told Ciri--that the Lioness of Cintra would exit in a way befitting of her name. Part of her wants Geralt to tell her the truth, tell her what really happened that night. Part of her is terrified to find out. The first part wins over, though, and she gathers the courage to ask.

“Tell me what happened,” Ciri says. He nods and opens his mouth--but in that split second before he speaks, in the split second before he describes the death of her grandmother, she already knows what he is going to say.

_ II. _

Ciri is nodding off on Roach when Geralt’s hand suddenly clenches around the reins. She looks up from her seat in front of him, and before she knows it, he’s dismounting Roach, leading her to a nearby tree, and hitching her to it. 

“Geralt?” she asks, clutching the horse’s mane. “What are you doing?”

He glances at her and adjusts the sword strapped to his back. “Heard something in the woods,” he says. “Stay here. Don’t try to follow me.”

Her eyes widen and she holds Roach tighter. “You’re leaving?”

“Only for a little bit, Ciri. I won’t be gone long.” He’s distracted, his head drifting toward the woods, and Ciri knows that he’s anxious to follow the sound. She wonders what kind of monster would be interested in hunting travelers who follow the main road so faithfully, but she’s noticed that in the past few days, the main road has begun fading into nothingness, buried under the ever-increasing snowfall. 

“I’ll stay with Roach,” she says. She dismounts and finds a gnarled root to sit on. Geralt nods and walks briskly into the forest, his footsteps growing softer until she peers into the trees and can’t see him anymore.

She mindlessly pats Roach, who lets out a soft whinny and nudges her. Ciri’s breath comes out in little puffs of steam, and she pulls her cloak tighter around her. There were other times Geralt had fended off monsters--she remembers when wolves had roused the two of them from their slumber, and by the time she’d gotten her bearings, he’d cut down almost half the pack. Ever since that incident, he hasn’t been setting up his bedroll in the night. Lately, the last thing Ciri’s been seeing before she falls asleep is Geralt kneeling next to the fire. It’s also been the first thing she wakes up to.

As the minutes pass, the anxious needling in her stomach grows more persistent. The road stretches on, and she knows there’s nobody around for miles except them. The thought unnerves her. She tries not to pay attention to every rustle, bird call, and gust of wind, but she finds it hard to concentrate. 

She knows what she’s afraid of seeing. The strange man, the Nilfgaardian soldier with the bird of prey feather in his helmet. She remembers everything so clearly, even though she’s been trying so hard to forget: how he pressed her against him as they galloped away from Cintra, how the strength of his grip trapped her to his cold armor. Sometimes she thinks she can see him out of the corner of her eye, flitting among the trees or emerging from behind a rock. But he’s never really there. She doesn’t know why, and she doesn’t even know if he’s real. What she does know is that she’s never felt a fear quite so potent. 

In the end, Geralt comes back, just like he’s done many times before. The sight of him makes Ciri slump back against Roach, the tension ebbing out of her posture. She smiles out of sheer relief.

“Was there a monster?” she asks. 

“Yes,” he says, wiping grime from his face. “A rock troll. I had to kill him.” It’s then that Ciri notices the blood on his armor, and how he limps a little, favoring one leg over the other. The old wound on his leg, the one he'd had when they’d found each other, hasn’t healed. She notices how he grimaces a little before swinging himself onto the saddle. 

He holds out a hand to pull her onto Roach as well, settling her in front of him. It’s the same way she rode with the Nilfgaardian. Except things are different now, and Geralt doesn’t pin her against him the way that the Nilfgaardian did. He’s warm and solid, and as they ride on, he lets her pull the front of his cloak around her like a blanket. 

Geralt is quiet, more than usual, and Ciri suddenly wants to ask him if his leg is still hurting. But she doesn’t, because then he might ask her why she was trembling so hard when he finally returned, and she wouldn’t know how to answer him. She clamps down on her question. She always does. She sees the Nilfgaardian in the trees, only for a split second, then vanishes. Her muscles tense involuntarily.

“Are you alright, Ciri?” Geralt asks from behind her.

She grips his cloak harder. “Of course,” she says. It’s only a vision, after all. Getting frightened by a mere image is childish. But at the same time, as snow starts floating down from the pale sky, Ciri wonders what would happen if she'd told him the truth. She wonders what he would say, if he would laugh at her. She wonders if the Nilfgaardian would disappear. The snow falls harder. 

She’s never asked Geralt what she should do if he leaves and doesn’t come back--even though she wants to, every time. Asking would mean that, one day, it could be true.

_ III. _

The snow is up to Roach’s knees, and it's howling around them in a white flurry. Ciri can barely see five feet in front of her. Geralt’s cloak, normally thick and warm, is soaked through. He grips the reins with increasing intensity, even though Ciri can see that his hands are stiff with cold. She blows a little into her own hands, but it doesn’t warm them, and she shivers. She can’t help it.

After a moment, Geralt’s warm presence at her back vanishes, and Ciri turns around. He’s standing next to Roach and feeding her something from his pocket. He brushes a thumb next to the horse’s nose and murmurs something unintelligible. Ciri realizes that his cloak is still draped around her.

“Geralt?” she asks, raising her voice against the storm. Snowflakes fly into her mouth and melt on her tongue. 

He turns to her. “I’ll walk alongside Roach,” he says. “She can’t handle carrying two in this storm.” He’s still holding the reins as he starts to wade through the snow. It’s slow progress, but with every step he clears the snow out, making it easier for Roach to follow. Ciri hugs the cloak closer to her, even if it’s wet and cold. 

She shivers again, violently this time, and she can’t seem to stop. The snow doesn’t cease. In fact, it blows harder, the snowflakes hitting her cheeks like little shards of glass. Her eyes squeeze shut. 

Ciri doesn’t know when they open again, but the first thing she sees is Geralt. He’s still walking, slower this time, and he’s hunched over. He’s shivering too, but the storm makes it hard to tell how much. She wants to hand him his cloak back. But her fingers are stiff and cold, and she doesn’t feel anything in them. As much as she wants her fingers to move, they can’t, and as much as she wants to keep her eyes open, they close. Again.

The next time Ciri wakes up, Roach has stopped completely. She feels strangely warm. An urge to take the cloak off comes over her, and she strains to move her arm, but she feels something being pushed into her hands instead. It’s a bowl filled with an aromatic liquid, and it’s burning hot. She almost drops it.

“Drink, Ciri.” Geralt speaks to her from somewhere above. There’s an edge of panic to his voice. Something is holding her upright, and she realizes that it’s his arm. He brings the bowl to her lips. “We’re almost there.” 

Ciri sips the liquid, and immediately a warmth spreads through her lips and into her mouth. She drinks greedily, only stopping to take a breath before gulping the rest of the bowl down. 

“Better?” he asks. She gathers the strength to nod. He puts the bowl away and brushes snow off of the cloak around her. She feels his hands shake through the fabric. 

“Aren’t” --she forces her teeth to stop chattering-- “aren’t you cold?

“Don’t worry about me.” He pats her shoulder and lifts her onto Roach. “I’m hardier than a normal human.” But his ears are so pale that they’re blue, and his jaw is clenched so tightly that Ciri worries his teeth will break. 

She wants to say something in protest, to ask him why he can’t warm himself up like he did for her, but the cold makes her mouth wooden and immovable. “Don’t fall asleep,” he tells her as he leads Roach on. “Please, Ciri, stay awake.”

She tries to force her eyes open, she really does, because she doesn’t want to make him worry any more. Snowflakes get caught in her lashes and freeze. The longer she stays awake, though, the longer she has to watch him struggle through the snow alone. It’s painful. She doesn’t want to see it. She wants to pretend everything is alright and that they’re not slowly freezing to death, but it’s hard to do that when Geralt’s dragging his legs slower and slower as if he’s wading through mud. Ciri secretly thinks even her nightmares would be easier to bear than this, and once the thought enters her mind, sleep does as well. It’s painless. As she loses consciousness, the anxiety leaves her as well. The nightmares don’t come. Nothing does.

She wakes up yet again. The air around her feels warm, and there isn’t any snow biting against her face. She twitches her fingers and realizes that she’s lying down, completely flat, and that there’s a heavy blanket draped over her. She’s in a room and it’s quiet. She’s alive.

After a moment, she lifts her head. Sitting next to her bed is Geralt, head bowed and wrapped in a blanket of his own. His eyes are closed.

She clears her throat. “Geralt?” she asks. “Where...where are we?”

At the sound of her voice, his head snaps up. He’s not so pale anymore. “Ciri,” he says, his voice breathless, “how are you feeling?”

She experimentally moves her limbs and finds that they’re all working. “Fine, I think. I’m kind of hungry.” She says it quietly, a little embarrassed.

He gives her a small smile and stands up. “You slept for a long time. Come with me, we’ll get something to eat.”

Ciri climbs out of the bed, immediately missing the comfort of her warm blanket. The floor is cold. She notices that Geralt’s leg--his bad one--has a bandage on it. He leads her through cramped hallways, and it’s only after they come across a window that she realizes it’s nighttime. There’s no storm anymore.

“We’re in Kaer Morhen,” Geralt says. “We’ll be staying here for the time being. There are other witchers here who will help us.”

Ciri perks up a little. She’s never seen another witcher besides Geralt--do they all have white hair like him? 

Her question is answered when they walk into a large room with a blazing hearth at the front. Sitting around the fireplace are four men, all nursing mugs of ale. One of them calls out to them.

“Had enough beauty sleep, Geralt?” The man grins, and Ciri does a double take at the sinewy scars raking up half of his face. She clutches Geralt’s arm without thinking about it.

He chuckles. “Oh, give it a rest, Eskel.” He places a hand on Ciri’s shoulder and squeezes reassuringly. “Ciri, why don’t you introduce yourself?”

She blinks up at him for a second, and when he nods at her, she reluctantly lets go of his arm and steps into the firelight. “I’m Cirilla,” she says. Normally, she would tack on something about being the princess of Cintra, but Geralt told her to keep her identity a secret, and besides--Cintra seems like a faraway land at this point. “Please call me Ciri. It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”

The men have varying degrees of surprise on their faces. The scarred man speaks up first, giving her a lopsided smile. “Nice to meet you, Ciri. I’m Eskel.”

“Hello, Ciri,” another one says. He’s stout and old, with hair almost as white as Geralt’s. “I’m Vesemir.” 

“Greetings. I’m Coen.” A witcher with pock-marks on his face speaks next. He has a beard that doesn’t quite manage to cover them up.

“Lambert.” The fourth one nods at her, seemingly satisfied with his introduction. Geralt heaves a sigh.

“Is there any stew left?” he asks. Vesemir nods and ladles out a steaming bowl, placing it in Ciri’s hands. She sits down with Geralt on a bench and quickly shovels the stew in her mouth. It’s thick and flavorful, but most of all it’s warm, and Ciri relishes the feeling of it sitting in her stomach. Before she knows it, she’s scraping her spoon against the bottom of the bowl. 

“Uh...thank you for the food.” Her cheeks flush with embarrassment. “It was delicious.”

Geralt laughs at that, and shoots a look at Vesemir. “Never heard anyone say that before.”

Vesemir’s eyes crinkle with a smile. “Would you like some more?”

Ciri stares fixedly at her lap. She nods. Vesemir gives her another bowl, even fuller than the one before. She eats slower this time.

Eventually the witchers--Eskel, Vesemir, Coen and Lambert--start talking, and Geralt soon joins them. He’s relaxed, and the color is fully back in his cheeks. Lambert says something and he laughs again. She’s never heard him do that with her. To be honest, she feels like an intruder. She wonders what exactly these people mean to Geralt, and why he brought her here of all places. But as the evening passes, she thinks she might know the answer to that--because she realizes that Geralt looks happy, truly happy, for the first time in--well, for the first time.

It’s later that night that Ciri settles herself in a small, chilly room right next to Geralt’s. The bed is nothing more than a straw pallet, and there’s a constant draft coming from the window. Vesemir looked slightly apologetic when he showed the room to her, but she assured him that a roof over her head’s more than enough to satisfy her. She was lying, of course, but she knows better than to complain. 

Ciri buries into her blanket. She doesn’t want to go to sleep. Still, she’s exhausted, even after passing out for who knows how long before their arrival. The good thing about eating dinner in a room with other people in it is that she doesn’t see the Nilfgaardian at the edge of her vision as much. But now she’s alone, and she’s afraid to look outside the window. She’s afraid to look anywhere but her hands.

She wonders if she will have another nightmare again tonight. She probably will, she figures, but at least Geralt will be in the other room and won’t be woken up by her screaming. Maybe he can finally get a good night’s rest. 

There’s a knock on her door. She walks to the door, the floor ice-cold against her bare feet, and opens it. It’s Geralt.

“I brought a heated stone for your bed,” he says, and holds up a bundle wrapped in rags. “It’ll warm you up.”

“Oh...thank you.” She follows him to her bed and watches as he lifts her blanket, placing it under. 

He’s in the middle of walking out the door when she suddenly stops him. “Wait!” she says, and immediately regrets it. She stares at him, unsure what to say.

“Ciri?” He turns around and raises his eyebrows. While she searches for a response, he gently closes the door and sits down next to her. “Is something wrong?”

She shakes her head no, even though part of her wants to beg him to stay. Instead, she says the first thing she can think of. “What did you give to me in the storm, when I was falling asleep?”

He looks mildly surprised at the question. “It was an herbal remedy to warm you. It’s lucky that I was carrying some with me at the time.”

“Why didn’t you take any? Weren’t you as cold as I was?”

“There was only enough for one,” he says. “You needed it more than me. You could’ve died, Ciri.”

It didn’t feel like she was dying at the time. In fact, she felt more peaceful than she’d felt in ages. She knows it was because of the cold, but in the snow she didn’t have nightmares. She didn’t see the man with the bird of prey feather in his helmet. She just saw white, endless stretches of white.

“You could’ve died too,” she tells him. "It would’ve been my fault.”

He frowns when he hears that. “Nothing would’ve been your fault. We did what we had to do to survive.”

“But what would I have done if you’d died?” The question sounds more panicked than she means it to. 

He pauses and stares at the ground. “I didn’t. No point thinking about it.”

“I have to, Geralt,” she says. “What if this happens again?”

“You’ll have Vesemir. Or Eskel. Or Coen. Even Lambert will help you.” He briefly smiles at the last sentence, then grows serious again. “I’m not going anywhere, Ciri. You know that, right?”

Her grandmother had told her that too, back when she was alive. It feels like a lifetime ago. Ciri looks at her hands. She can’t rely on empty promises, not anymore. Not when her grandmother had said the same, then thrown herself from the castle window. 

Ciri worries her lip and looks at Geralt, who’s looking back with a concerned expression. “Can I ask you something?” she says.

“Yes. Anything.”

She takes a deep breath and squeezes her eyes shut. “Have you ever...have you ever seen a Nilfgaardian soldier following us? With a feather in his helmet?”

Immediately, he straightens up. “No, I haven’t. Why?”

So the soldier is a figment of her imagination after all. She doesn’t know if that makes her feel better or worse. “Nothing,” she says, “it’s not important.” She laughs nervously, but it sounds more like a gasp.

“Ciri.” Geralt looks at her seriously. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She wants nothing more than to curl up underneath her blanket and block the world out. She doesn’t want to tell him, because he’ll laugh at her, and then she won’t be able to tell him anything ever again. But he looks so worried that she lets it slip anyway. “I see him, sometimes,” she says. “Out of the corner of my eye. I know he’s not real, but I can’t stop thinking about him, and--”

“It’s okay,” Geralt says, cutting off her rambling. “It’s okay. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I don’t know!” She buries her face in her hands. “I just--couldn’t.” She pauses, and when Geralt doesn’t say anything she continues in a small voice. “I thought you wouldn’t believe me.”

There’s a moment when both of them pause. Then Geralt sighs. “Oh, Ciri…” He sounds disappointed. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, because it feels like the only appropriate thing to say. “I’m sorry.”

She feels a gentle tug on her arm, and she lets him pry her hands away from her face. He looks her in the eyes. “You don’t need to apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

But she has done wrong things. She doesn’t think he understands that. She’s the reason why he almost froze to death the day before. She’s the reason why he hasn’t slept through the night in weeks. It’s because of her--her fears, her nightmares. 

“You can go now,” she says, because the guilt is too much for her to bear. Geralt, however, makes no move to leave. She looks at him with confusion. “Geralt?”

“If you want,” he says, “I can stay in here tonight. So you’re not alone.”

She lifts her head. Suddenly, without warning, she feels her eyes grow wet and her throat form a painful lump. She’s scared, so scared, and even though she can’t understand why he would willingly go another night without sleeping, what’s even worse is that she wants to let him. She wants to let him stay more than anything else. 

“I can’t,” she says. It comes out in a pained whisper. "I can’t make you do this.”

Geralt looks at her with deep sympathy in his eyes. “You can.”

That night, Ciri discovers that even though she has a roof over her head, a heated stone under her stomach, and Geralt at the foot of her bed, the nightmares don’t stop. She doesn’t dream of her grandmother’s death this time. Instead, she sees the Nilfgaardian. He appears straight in front of her, on a hulking black horse. He rides towards her. Suddenly, Geralt’s in front of her, and he draws his sword with a metallic hiss. For a moment Ciri almost collapses with relief. But only for a moment. With one swift motion, the Nilfgaardian thrusts his sword through Geralt, then tosses him aside. In the end, he kills her too.

It’s too much. She wakes up with a scream and a heartbeat so fast it’s painful. In less than a moment, Geralt’s at her side.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “It’s just a dream.”

She doesn’t know how to explain that some of her dreams are just dreams, and some of her dreams are visions of reality. She doesn’t know how to explain to him that she saw her grandmother die with her own eyes. So she just throws her arms around him and cries. She cries for her grandmother, for herself, and for him too. 

“I thought--I thought they would stop,” she sobs, taking gasping breaths, “I thought I wouldn’t have any more nightmares...”

He doesn’t say anything. He just presses a solid hand against her back and lets her cling onto him. He’s warm and smells like Roach. She buries her head into the crook of his neck, where she feels the puckered edge of a scar.

Ciri’s a fool. It’s not like Geralt can change anything about what happened to her. He can’t fight the Nilfgaardian, or change the fact that her grandmother killed herself. He can’t save her country. She doesn’t even know why she wants him here so badly, but she does. She feels so...so stupid, so young, and she hates it, but even then she can’t suppress the burning desire to ask him one last question--the one question that she’s always wanted to know the answer to, ever since things started to fall apart. Ever since a lifetime ago.

“Geralt,” she whispers, “why didn’t you come?”

He stills. He pulls back to look at her. 

Deep down, she thinks she knows the answer. And when he tells her in a quiet voice what it is, she finds that she’s right. She can’t blame him, not after everything. There’s no room for that in her heart. 

“I’m sorry,” he tells her after he answers her question. “For all of it.”

“I’m sorry too.” 

They sit for a while. Ciri’s tears dry on her face. Eventually, she lies back down on the bed. She doesn’t want to have another nightmare, but she knows she will. Her breathing evens out. Sleep washes over her like a wave--slowly and quietly. 

She dreams of her grandmother falling, over and over, never hitting the ground. She dreams of the Nilfgaardian crushing her against his horse. She dreams of Geralt collapsing in the snow and staying there. But then, she wakes.

It’s early morning, and the light streams in from the window. Something warm is at her side and she realizes that it’s Geralt. He’s asleep, flat on his back beside her, with an arm draped over his eyes to block out the sun. A small smile lifts her face. Her grandmother used to sleep with her like this as a child, when she got sick and couldn’t bear being alone in her quarters. It’s not the same as before, though. It’ll never be the same. She knows nothing will really be the same again.

She wonders if his leg still pains him. She wants to wake him up to ask, but this is the first time she’s seen him sleeping in weeks, so she holds back. There will be time for that later. There will be time for a lot of things, she thinks, time to make up what they’d lost. Time enough to start anew. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! Just a note, I reference Geralt and Ciri's meeting in the Sword of Destiny at the end of the fic, so if you didn't read that it might be a little confusing. All you need to know is that they actually meet a few years before Cintra falls to Nilfgaard in the Brokilon Forest, but Geralt leaves her.  
> I think it's also worth mentioning that my version of the arrival to Kaer Morhen contradicts the book's slightly. It's nothing major, but I just want to acknowledge that.  
> Happy reading!

_ I. _

Geralt’s stirred from his sleep by a low growl--almost imperceptible to a human ear, but very apparent to his. His eyes snap open. The night sky greets him, the moon pale and full. Ciri’s fast asleep across from him. There’s another growl, closer this time.

He quietly reaches for his sword and stands up. From this vantage point he can see what’s inching closer to the camp: a pack of wolves, fur bristling and teeth bared. He tenses. He has to think fast, keep them from hurting Ciri.

The wolves slink closer, and one of them comes close to Ciri’s sleeping form. Geralt unsheathes the steel blade. In that moment, she suddenly opens her eyes and he freezes.

“...Geralt?” she says, and the wolf lunges.

Without thinking about it, he counters the attack, jamming his blade between the wolf and Ciri. He thrusts upward and cuts into the skull. Blood immediately splatters onto his face, warm and wet. He thinks Ciri’s saying something, but adrenaline rings in his ears and drowns her out.

The rest of the wolves howl and snarl, pawing the ground, agitated over the death of one of their own. He doesn’t care. Time seems to slow as he plunges his sword into one wolf after the next, cutting off their growls with a single twist of his blade. He rips into their fur, smells the coppery tang of blood that soaks into the ground. 

One of the wolves rakes its claw against his thigh. He curses and wrestles it into the ground, shoving his sword in the spot right between its eyes. He stands back up and enters the fight again. He cuts, kills, and maims, until Ciri’s shouting overtakes the thrum of adrenaline coursing through his veins.

“Geralt!” He turns around and she’s standing now. “It’s okay,” she says, “you killed them.”

He takes a moment to look around the camp, and she’s right. Wolf carcasses litter the ground, blood matting the fur and soaking into the dirt. He’s panting, hard, and as the initial burst of energy wears off he feels a dull throbbing in his leg. His bad one.

“Ciri…” he says. “Are you alright?”

She nods, but she has a strange look on her face--wide-eyed and pale. “Are you?”

Geralt takes a moment to steady his breathing. Seeing the bodies on the ground, he thinks that if he’d just waited a little, he could’ve scared the wolves off. He didn’t have to kill them. He brushes the back of his hand against his face and it comes off sticky with blood. 

He sighs. “Yes. Go back to sleep. I’ll clean this up.”

Although Ciri seems to be on the verge of saying something to him, she does what he asks without complaint. Picking her way through the dead wolves, she finds her blanket and curls up beside the fire, even though it’s just a pile of smoking branches at this point. He hears her heartbeat--erratic and loud, thumping fearfully in her chest.

As Geralt picks up the wolf carcasses, one by one, he never lets go of his sword. He doesn’t want to take any more chances. He dumps each body a ways off from camp, next to a rotting stump, and each one lands with a dull thud in the mossy dirt. He keeps his eyes trained on Ciri the whole time, ready to drop the wolf at a moment’s notice if something tries to attack her. 

The whole process takes longer than he anticipated. Each wolf weighs heavily on his shoulders, and it’s hard to carry a body and a sword at the same time. When he’s done, there’s a pile of wolves on the ground, each one with glassy yellow eyes. A sparrow flits over and lands on top of the pile, tilting its head inquisitively.

Geralt turns his back and walks back to camp. Even though the bodies are gone, the blood remains, and when it rains the ground will stink of death. His leg pains more with every step. The ghoul bite never healed properly, mostly because he never gave it a chance to. There was no choice but to keep moving. And now, it’s too late. 

He sits down next to the fire and notices Ciri’s still awake. He can tell by her heartbeat. She’s laying with her back to him and her face buried into her bedroll. He wonders if she’s too scared to go to sleep--scared of the wolves coming again. Or maybe she’s afraid of something else.

Geralt should never let himself get caught off guard like that, not anymore. He can’t let himself sleep again. From now on, he decides to stay awake during the night to watch for threats, to eliminate them before he resorts to mindless killing. Ciri’s already seen so much death. He can’t show her even more. He doesn’t want to see her look at him with that wide-eyed stare again.

He knows he would do anything to protect her. He would lie, cheat, steal, break his witcher’s code a hundred times over. But that’s not the point. The point, he thinks, lies in the fact that he massacred a dozen wolves in front of her eyes. The point is that blood stains the ground she rests on. The point is that, despite the fact that Ciri insisted she was okay, Geralt wants to ask her what plagues her dreams at night--the fall of Cintra, or him.

_ II. _

As Geralt sets off towards the woods, the noise he heard earlier grows louder and louder. He casts a last glance to Ciri and Roach, makes sure they’re okay, then focuses completely on the sound.

It sounds strange. The only way he can describe it is a sort of deep mewling, blending in with the bird calls and rustling of branches. The noise comes from deep inside the forest. Geralt narrows his eyes, and soon even the howl of the wind fades inside his mind. He only hears the odd, low cries.

He steps over gnarled roots and between trees, boots sinking slightly into the snowy earth. He hears the cries grow louder and more desperate. And then he sees it, sees the source: a small stone under a tree.

Or at least, that’s what it looks like. Geralt steps cautiously into a clearing, where there’s a round, quivering mass with a slate-gray exterior. Underneath the hard, gray plates covering the form is scaly pink flesh. He can even see beady eyes peering up at him. 

It’s a rock troll, no doubt about it. A young one too, so young he wonders where its parent is. The troll lets out another gravelly whine. Its eyes stare into Geralt’s, blinking wetly and rapidly.

He crouches down next to it. “Not here to hurt you,” he says. He isn’t even sure the troll is old enough to comprehend speech yet--something that even adult trolls struggle with. But he tries anyway. “Are you injured?”

The troll just mewls again and shifts a little against the base of the tree. When it does, it reveals a metal contraption with huge teeth that’s buried under it. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the troll is buried in the contraption, because now Geralt can see that it’s a bear trap. The troll blinks with its glassy eyes and shifts again, but the trap only digs further into its soft flesh.

Geralt’s first instinct is to leave. There’s clearly no threat to Ciri here, and that’s really why he came in the first place. But something about the trembling creature’s gaze makes him hesitate. Although it doesn’t seem to understand him, he’s able to understand it in a way--able to understand that it’s in pain, terrified, and desperate. 

He looks into its eyes. “Can I…?” he asks, slowly reaching his hand for the trap. When it doesn’t snap at him, he wedges his hand between its body and the metal, lifting just enough to see where exactly the trap holds it.

Geralt sucks in a breath between his teeth. The metal jaws of the trap dig right into the troll’s belly, its most vulnerable part. He understands now why the troll is crying so painfully. There’s no way to free it, not without ripping its stomach in half. There’s nothing he can do. 

What he doesn’t understand is why the troll is alone. From what he can remember, trolls this young usually are accompanied by a fully-grown one until they’re old enough to fend for themselves. There’s no other troll here. If there was, he would’ve sensed it by now. The troll cries out again, and he wonders whether it’s out of pain, or out of longing for its parent. 

Geralt knows what he has to do. He takes out a small hunting knife, the one he usually skins monsters with, and places the tip of it in between the cracks in the troll’s armor, where he can feel the shivering flesh. It’s close to the neck, close enough so that the troll won’t suffer.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Then he plunges the knife in. He goes so deep that the entire knife is buried, the hilt stopping him from going even further. The troll screeches. The sound echoes through the trees. 

After a minute, when Geralt is sure the troll is dead, he rips the knife out. With it comes a spray of hot blood, which splatters over Geralt’s face and onto his armor. He spits on the ground, but the coppery taste never really leaves his mouth. He sheathes the knife and stands up. The troll is limp on the ground. At least it’s not in pain anymore, he thinks, but that doesn’t really make him feel better.

On his way back, he stops at a stream to clean the blood off. He splashes the cold water on his face and watches as it runs off red. He does this until the water turns pink, then clear. He does his best to clean everything, because he doesn’t want Ciri to see him like this. Still, he can never quite get everything off, even after scrubbing his face until it turns numb from the cold.

There’s nothing he can do. As he emerges from the forest, he sees Ciri sitting next to a tree and Roach tossing her head impatiently. Ciri’s knees are curled into her chest and her eyes are glued to the ground. He realizes that she’s trembling. 

He walks toward her and his leg throbs. He’s not really sure why it hurts, but he falters for a moment and briefly closes his eyes. When he opens them, Ciri’s looking at him with obvious relief.

“Was there a monster?” she asks. He tells her the truth. There was one, and he had to kill it. He realizes that she may interpret his statement to mean something different than what actually happened, but is there really any difference? Is there a difference between killing out of fear, and killing out of mercy?

Geralt doesn’t think so. Just like how he doesn’t think there’s a difference between abandoning a child out of selfishness, and abandoning a child to protect it. Even if it’s only for a little while, only long enough to kill something and come back. Either way, the troll is dead. And Ciri is trembling.

He lifts her onto Roach and starts back on the path to Kaer Morhen. After a few moments, her hands reach for the cloak hanging over his shoulders, and she pulls it around her as well. He wants to ask why, but she probably won’t tell him the real reason. He wants her to be honest with him more than anything. But he also knows that he keeps leaving. He keeps killing. He can’t seem to do anything else, no matter how hard he tries.

Ciri stiffens suddenly. Her small hands tighten around his cloak.

“Are you alright, Ciri?” he asks. She tells him that she is, of course she is. Somehow, he doesn’t believe her, but he doesn’t know what else to ask. He doesn’t know what else to do but spur on Roach, feel the cold bite of snow on his hands, and hope that it isn’t too late to save her as well.

_ III. _

Geralt takes one step. Then another. It’s all he can focus on. The wind roars in his ears until he doesn’t hear anything else, and the snow is up to his knees.

He keeps a firm grip on Roach’s reins, even though he knows she will follow him regardless. It helps ground him, in a way. It reminds him that Ciri is laying on the horse’s back, wrapped in his cloak and freezing to death. Part of him is sick to his stomach with worry. The other part is too focused on keeping himself alive to think about anything else.

This isn’t a regular storm. This is a full-on blizzard, one that could’ve been avoided if he’d been quicker about getting them to Kaer Morhen. He knows it’s too late to do anything about it, but he curses himself anyway. It’s easier to do that than to think about how much farther it is to the keep.

Geralt hears a muffled groan from behind him and he turns around. It’s Ciri--her eyes are drooping shut and she’s about to fall off Roach. Without even thinking about it, he stumbles to catch her. She’s shivering, badly. 

“Ciri,” he says. “Ciri. Can you hear me?”

She doesn’t respond. He curses again. He shoves his hand into Roach’s saddlebags and searches for a fabric-wrapped glass bottle. It’s hard, because the snow keeps blowing into his eyes and his fingers are stiff and numb. Even so, he finds it. 

He crouches down as best he can and sets Ciri on his knee, so she’s in contact with him instead of the cold snow. The bottle is filled with a dark liquid. It’s a warming, herbal brew, one he always keeps with him as a last resort. He figures this is as good a time as any to use it, because Ciri’s pale face keeps sending little spikes of fear through his stomach. 

He uses his last bit of energy to make the Sign of Igni. For a second, his hand flickers with a pitiful flame. The next second, the wind blows it away, but Geralt knows it’s enough. The bottle feels warm in his hand, like a sun-heated stone. He can’t stop to relish the feeling, not while Ciri’s eyes flutter closed over and over again. With trembling fingers, he uncorks the bottle and holds it to her mouth.

“Drink, Ciri.” He watches as her eyes open and she recognizes him. She does, slowly at first, then all at once until the bottle is empty and she’s left clutching the rapidly cooling glass.

He doesn’t want to let her out of his sight after this. But he needs to look to the road ahead, so he tucks her onto Roach as best as he can and starts walking again. 

Every few minutes after that, he glances back to make sure she’s still alive. At some point--he’s not sure when--she falls asleep, even though he told her not to. Did he tell her that? He can’t really remember. Everything’s turning into a blur. The only constant is the soft crunch of his feet through the snow as he trudges forward. And the cold, which is so intense that he feels it in his bones. He keeps dragging one foot in front of the other, even though it gets harder and harder.

A light. It’s small, barely noticeable, but Geralt thinks he sees a pinprick of light in the distance. As he walks, it grows larger. Then he thinks he hears shouting, although he’s not quite sure. It’s hard to hear anything besides the wind.

“--there?” He makes out the last word, and strains to hear any more. The voice rings out again. “Who’s there?”

Geralt tries to respond, but his lips are frozen. He doesn’t know what to do but keep walking. The voice calls out to him once more.

“Geralt?” 

His head snaps up to see who it is. He takes another step, struggling to reach the person calling out to him, but he stumbles, accidentally letting go of Roach’s reins. Ciri, he thinks, he needs to get help for Ciri. No matter what.

Geralt, surprisingly, doesn’t hit the ground. A pair of arms catch him midway and helps him straighten back up. “Geralt,” the voice says, and he looks up at the person’s face. “You’re alive.” They capture him in a solid embrace, tight and strong. It’s warm.

Of course, he thinks. Of course it would be him. Geralt suddenly feels his strength disappear, and he lets himself fall into the grasp. “Vesemir…” he manages to say. He coughs and clears his throat. “Ciri. Help...Ciri.”

“Who’s that?” Vesemir says. “Geralt? Damn it, Wolf, stay with me!”

But Geralt doesn’t hear anything else. He slips peacefully into unconsciousness, and all he can think of is that phrase. Ciri. Help Ciri, he thinks, keep her alive, she can’t die. Take her home, Vesemir.

The next time Geralt opens his eyes, there’s no storm. At first, there’s not much of anything, but then his eyes blink a few times and he sees the familiar stone ceiling of Kaer Morhen. He twitches his fingers, one by one, then his toes. After making sure his limbs still work properly, he takes a breath and sits up. His leg, the one that’s been paining him for weeks, is carefully wrapped in a bandage.

He’s in a cramped room, with dusty bags of carpentry supplies shoved in the corner. Ciri’s asleep in a cot not far from his. He walks closer and sees that she doesn’t look so pale anymore, and he almost laughs with relief. Finally, she isn’t hanging onto life by a thread anymore. The little daggers of anxiety in his stomach melt away. 

After tucking and re-tucking her into the cot until he’s satisfied that she’s warm enough, Geralt walks out of the room and into Kaer Morhen’s maze-like hallways. Before long, he runs into Eskel. He finds him pacing back and forth.

When Eskel notices him, a grin breaks across his face. “Thank Melitele, you’re finally awake. I thought you were a goner, Geralt.”

Geralt offers him a smile of his own. “Me too,” he says. “How long--”

“The whole night. Even Lambert couldn’t wake you up.”

Geralt raises his eyebrows. “Lambert’s here?”

Eskel nods. “Yeah. Coen too, from the School of the Griffin. And Vesemir, but you already know that.”

He doesn’t remember when he saw Lambert last. Or any other witcher, for that matter. It had been long, far too long, since he’d wintered here. 

Seeing the look on his face, Eskel claps a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, let’s go tell the others you’re awake.”

After a round of greetings in which Geralt simultaneously embraces his fellow witchers and subjects himself to their friendly ribbing, he wolfs down about five bowls of Vesemir’s stew in one sitting. Now, he’s sitting with them at a long, stone table positioned right next to the fire.

“So,” Lambert says, “whatever happened to your sorceress girlfriend? Did she get killed at Sodden?”

Geralt grimaces. Only Lambert would callously ask about Yennefer’s death like that. “Honestly, I don’t know.” He sighs. “I...well, I thought she died. I thought she was one of the Fourteen. Now I’m not so sure.”

“You don’t know?” Lambert asks incredulously. “How about that bard? Is he possibly dead too?”

“Lambert,” Vesemir warns, “can’t you give it a rest? The boy just woke up.”

“Vesemir, I’m a century old. Not really a boy anymore.”

The older witcher laughs at that. “Once you get to my age, you’ll think differently.”

Geralt turns back to Lambert. “Jaskier’s definitely not dead. Although I don’t really know what he’s doing right now. The last time I saw him was before I got Ciri.”

Eskel pipes up with a question of his own. “How’d you even find the girl? She wasn’t in Cintra, was she?”

“No,” Geralt says. “We met by chance. She was staying with a peasant family.”

Eskel looks mildly impressed. “That’s some coincidence. You two really are bound by destiny, huh?”

Geralt stays silent, not really sure how to respond. He thinks they are, all things considered. But the thought of Ciri being chained to him, of all people, makes his stomach twist in dejection. He wishes he could provide something better for her. Not...whatever this is.

“By Melitele, Geralt, if we’d known you were going to spiral into a pit of depression, we wouldn’t have asked.” Lambert takes a long swig from his mug of ale. 

“Sorry.” He shakes his head to clear it. Vesemir throws him a look that’s hard to miss. “It’s nothing. Sorry.”

It’s a few hours later when Vesemir approaches him in the hallway. He’s filled out somewhat, more than Geralt had thought he would. Kaer Morhen seems like the one place that time wouldn’t reach, but he knows now that time does pass here, just like anywhere else. It’s only the memories of his childhood that warp his perception.

“Still asleep? he asks, tilting his head toward the door to the room he’s sharing with Ciri.

Geralt nods. “I’m not surprised. She nearly died out there.”

“What are you going to do when she wakes up? Train her?”

Although some might have asked this question mockingly, Vesemir looks serious, so Geralt responds in kind. “That’s my plan,” he says. “Don’t really know what else to do.”

Vesemir crosses his arms and stands pensively for a minute. “I suppose you’re right.”

Geralt stands with him. He chooses his words carefully. “What was it like,” he asks, “when you trained us?” 

The older witcher looks at him with surprise. “You don’t remember?”

Geralt shakes his head. That had been many lifetimes ago. He barely remembers anything from back then, and what he does remember isn’t enough. He can only remember the horrible, sickening pain of the Trials, convulsing on the small cot and desperately wishing for Eskel. He remembers fearing Vesemir would take him away again. And after undergoing a second round of mutations, he remembers feeling nothing at all.

“You had nightmares,” Vesemir says. “Almost every night. During weapons training, you often stared off into the distance.”

“And then?”

Vesemir sighs. “What do you want me to say, Wolf? You killed your first monster. Then you left. That’s all.”

Geralt always thought there would be more to his childhood than that. He shouldn’t be surprised, he thinks. The killing, the leaving--it had to start somewhere. Now he knows they’re a part of him. A part of his blood.

He turns to Vesemir. “I won't let what happened to me happen again,” he says. “Not to her.”

Vesemir looks at Geralt honestly, openly. “I understand.”

There’s nothing more to say, so he turns around and walks to the room to check up on Ciri. That’s the way they do things here in Kaer Morhen. Anything they don’t know how to express, they don’t say at all. He accepted that truth a long time ago.

He doesn’t know if he was really ever angry in the first place. He doesn’t know if he feels anything besides regret for the life he could’ve had. And longing. There’s hatred, true, but not for Vesemir. It’s for himself.

Geralt suddenly decides to break the silence. “Vesemir, I…” he starts, then trails off. “I’m not enough for her.”

In response, Vesemir places a hand on his shoulder. He looks at him with the same honesty as before. “Geralt,” he says, “that’s not for you to decide.”

Maybe Vesemir is right. Maybe Geralt doesn’t have to think about such things. He can just live his life, train her to be a witcher and take satisfaction in the fact that she’s not dead in a ditch somewhere.

But he can’t. Because right now, half a day later, Ciri is clinging to him with all the strength she can muster, soaking his shirt with hot tears. Her heartbeat thumps in his ears, rabbit-quick. Another nightmare. Another thing he can’t protect her from.

“Geralt,” she whispers, “why didn’t you come?”

He stares at her in the shadowy moonlight of her room. He’d asked himself the same question many times. Why didn’t he come for her? Because he didn’t want her? 

No, he thinks. He wanted her very much. He wanted her as soon as they’d met for the first time in Brokilon, back when she’d yanked his hair and shouted orders in his ear. Back then, he’d laid under the stars with her and told her stories, and he’d been happy. Truly happy. He left her, all those years ago. And he stayed away. And he kept on doing so, until each day apart from her strung together to form one big series of leavings, over and over, even though it hurt him, because it was infinitely better than the alternative.

He doesn’t know what to tell her. He doesn’t know how to say that he didn’t come because he never learned how to. 

Still, he tries to say it anyway, because it’s important. Because it isn’t too late for her, even though it is for him, and he can be grateful for that if nothing else. He thinks that if Vesemir were to walk by right now, he would be proud of him. A little sad, too--sad that it took Geralt this long to figure out, sad that Geralt is the first one to do so. 

He wishes he could figure the rest out too. He wants to know how to never kill in front of her again, how to finally persuade her to tell him the truth. How to love her, even though the occasions in which he’s experienced love have been precious and few. 

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “For all of it.”

“I’m sorry too.” She clings even tighter to him. 

Even though he doesn’t mean to, he lays down right there, next to her. Sleep comes easily to him, because he’s reminded of a happier time, a time where the two of them had sprawled underneath the stars and fallen asleep to the rustling of trees. Things are different now. It’s the dead of winter, and there are no trees this deep into the mountains. Ciri is older. She has nightmares. But still--she’s curled up next to him, just like back then. Everything else can wait until the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Comments mean the world to me and then some, so if you feel like making my day a thousand times better, then leave a comment!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! Comments are very much appreciated...thanks so much for reading!


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